Saturday, August 4, 2007

Today we toured a small part of the island. We woke up to a beautiful blue sky and just knew that it would be nice and hot, what better day then to try out Xiamen's air conditioned bus system. Only 2 RNB for a ride in air conditioned comfort, as opposed to the 1 RNB rides on the non-air conditioned buses.

Took a trip up to Xiamen university and walked through it's campus. It is absolutely beautiful, and the temple right at the entrance is even better. The top picture is from the temple grounds just at the entrance to the university. From there we walked down to the beach along the ring road and around their old fort.

Yeah, a lot of walking in the heat, too much in fact, so we hopped on another bus. Yes, we hopped on like we knew what we were doing, only to realize that the bus just before is the one we wanted and we would have to get out an wait for a transfer later. The later bus didn't come and after maybe 10 minutes of waiting in the nice hot sun we finally just hailed a taxi to take us over to the ex-pat area.

We were looking for a travel agency that is supposed to have great deals on flights out of Xiamen, but found that it was closed today for training, so we sat at an ex-pat bar filled with Aussies. Learnt even more about dealing with the Chinese, the owner says that he hasn't paid a gas bill in 9 years. Another friend of his received gas bills but was waved away when he went in to try and pay them, they didn't total them up and actually charge him until he moved out 3 years later.

Then we walked back across the lake, closer to where we will soon be living and we stumbled upon this beautiful outside bar recently opened by a Swede. We are thinking that this place may just be our new Friday evening haunt.

Yes, this is a nice bar indeed, right on the ocean with picturesque sunsets over the mainland. Maybe we will get used to the life here, maybe....

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Wichmann Stories

Wichmann Stories is a blog that was originally created for documenting our life as we adjust to our new home in Xiamen, China. We've since moved back Stateside to Chicago, Illinois and now this blog will just have our random stories of our travels and the occasional interesting items we need to share.